


Second First Date

by qianwanshi



Series: bad first date [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Bad First Dates, Everyone Is Alive, I will continue if there is interest, M/M, Richard Tozier is a Deeply Embarrassing person, other characters will appear if I continue, soft, they're like uuhhhh in their 30s, this is a non clown au, this is just so self indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-15 23:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21261542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qianwanshi/pseuds/qianwanshi
Summary: When asked why he ever agreed to let Stan set him up on a blind date in the first place, Richie would blame a temporary loss of sanity. Like his brain was all clogged up with enough dumb horny energy that he forgot to stop and recall that Stan is straight and has terrible taste in men.The date goes... not well.----this is just 6k and some change of soft self indulgent scene after soft self indulgent scene and that's the god's honest truth





	Second First Date

**Author's Note:**

> I have more and more thoughts for this bad date au and I do hope to post them eventually. I hope you all enjoy! I'm posting 2 things I've started and completed in the same month, I have truly become possessed by a devil. I'm not 100% pleased with this bad boy but if I proof read it one more time I'm going to have an aneurysm.
> 
> Shout out again again to IfItHollers she's my fave.
> 
> ALSO big disclaimer I know next to nothing about nyc but I tried, ok, i got dam tried

When asked why he ever agreed to let Stan set him up on a blind date in the first place, Richie would blame a temporary loss of sanity. Like his brain was all clogged up with enough dumb horny energy that he forgot to stop and recall that Stan is straight and has terrible taste in men. 

He fuckin’ did it, though. It’s New York City, and despite the insane number of people, finding a good date is difficult. So he told Stan to go ahead and set him up with his coworker and only panicked for like half an hour about it. 

Until the day of the date, at least.

He stands in front of his closet, staring hopelessly inside right up until the very last minute he can allow himself to delay and still make it to the date on time, at which point he grabs the least wrinkled shirt he can find and pulls it on over the cleanest t-shirt he has that isn’t currently sitting wrinkled in his ‘I should really put those away’ clean laundry pile. His clothes aren’t _bad_ necessarily, but this is a date with a coworker of Stanley’s. He works in an accounting firm. He’s boring by default. 

He’d asked Stan for details about the guy, and hadn’t gotten a whole lot from him. He was a hard worker, Stan had told him, like Richie was interested in hiring him instead of dating him. What kind of shitty sales pitch was that, anyway?

What person who can be summarized as a ‘hard worker’ would be even remotely interested in dating a kind of loud fairly crass poorly dressed budding comedian like Richie? How did Stan describe Richie to _him_ to convince him to agree? Had he gone all out and lied? Was this guy the type who just had to hear “he’s 6’2”” and that was enough? 

He’d called Stan earlier in the day who had simply advised him to “be normal” before hanging up the phone. 

Richie doesn’t even know what that’s supposed to mean. Be normal? The fuck? Be his normal self? Or did he mean ‘act like a normal human being, not like a person who once lost his car keys while inside his car’? 

God, Richie is sweating.

It’s too late to do anything about, though. He’s already at the restaurant, so he can only hope that he doesn’t look as nervous and damp as he feels like he looks.

Especially not when he gets led to the table and finds that the guy waiting for him is cute. Like, really cute. 

He stands to properly introduce himself and he’s _tiny_. Tiny and cute and holding his hand out expectantly and looking at Richie with an expression like maybe Richie is a little bit stupid. He says his name is Edward Kaspbrak but everyone calls him Eddie. 

The date itself goes... not well. Richie’s nerves refuse to dissipate after introductions and he kind of blacks out and he’s pretty sure he introduced himself as _Richard_. Eddie himself is quiet and mild and polite in a way that, at first, seems to just be his personality but becomes increasingly apparent is disinterest as their meal continues. It only makes Richie even sweater with every stilted conversation starter.

It is, unequivocally, without question, the worst first date Richie has ever had. And he’d had a first date that drank too much and puked all over his shirt and shoes once. 

Stan breaks into his house the next day and drags him out of bed where he’d been stewing, embarrassed, ever since he got home. Yes, he has a key and only lives one floor away, but he hadn’t been invited and it’s annoying. To his credit, he doesn’t pry or push or harass, he sits Richie at his kitchen table and begins to cook grilled cheese sandwiches, stacking them up until Richie’s good and ready to talk on his own. 

“I want to try a sensory deprivation tank.” Richie breaks the extended silence once Stan plops his fourth sandwich onto a plastic plate, a fifth already in the pan. “Where the sense they deprive me of is breathing.”

The butter sizzles loudly in his old frying pan, covered in scratches because no one ever fucking told him not to use metal utensils in it. 

“Breathing isn’t a sense,” Stan replies steadily. He clicks off the burner and slides the plate stacked high with sandwiches across the table toward Richie. He folds into the seat across from him with his legs crossed in front of him, prying open a pickle jar with his thin fingers. “That bad?”

Richie groanes loudly. He’d been halfway to reaching for a sandwich and instead flops forward onto the table. 

“_Yes_.” Richie does not remove his face from where it planted against the wood of the table to speak. “He asked what I do for fun and I said _stocks_.” 

Stan’s lips pinch around the dainty bite of sandwich in his mouth in a way that strongly suggests he’s trying not to laugh. 

“I was so sweaty I looked like I was going through heroin withdrawals.” Richie feels so embarrassingly close to crying he shoves half a sandwich in his mouth at once just for something to do. With any luck he’ll choke to death. “Fuck you, dude.”

“What happened?” Stan licks pickle juice off of his thumb. He always ate so tidily, had for as long as Richie had known him. 

Richie’s face and shirt are covered with crumbs.

“I don’t know,” Richie says after swallowing his massive bite of food in one large painful lump. “He was hot and I lost my mind.”

Sparing a moment for one eyebrow pinched baffled look that Richie can’t pin down the source of, Stan shrugs hopelessly. 

“I think I monologued about tornado patterns.”

“I’m calling Bev,” Stan declares.

xxxx

“I talked to Eddie at work today,” Stan announces loudly as he lets himself into Richie’s apartment again several days later.

Richie near jumps out of his skin at the banging of his door. 

“Jesus, Stan!” Richie clutches at his chest not entirely unlike an old timey fair maiden. “I’m gonna start jerking off in the living room so you fucking learn how to knock.”

While removing his stuffy office jacket and dropping his shoulder bag onto a chair, Stan looks at Richie through narrowed eyes. “I’ve seen your dick, Richie.”

Shit, it was true, he had. But in his defense, he was really drunk. And covered in puke (his own). And Stan was an incredible friend for helping him get showered despite his own tenuous grasp on sobriety. 

Well there was also that other time-

No, wait, Stan mentioned Eddie, that’s way more important that how many times and under what circumstances he and Stan have seen each other naked. 

“You talked to Eddie?” Richie had concluded his moping about his bad date several days ago, resigned to the fact that there would not be a second date. This does very little to quash the tiny flutters of hope in his chest caused by Stan just mentioning his name. 

“Yeah, we-”

They’re interrupted by Richie’s door swinging open once more, although comparatively sedate to Stan’s grand entrance. Richie throws his hands out at his sides. “Does no one fucking knock!”

Beverly swings the door shut behind her with her foot, arms weighed down with bags of take out.

“You’re the one that leaves your door unlocked,” she responds, unbothered by the shouting. Richie approaches her quickly and lifts the bags out of her arms while she kicks off her boots at his door. 

“Yeah, well.” Richie shrugs. 

The silence is comfortable and familiar for the next several minutes while the three of them move around each other in Richie’s cramped kitchen with a practiced ease. Richie arranges the food containers along his table, Stan lets himself into Richie’s cupboards for plates and silverware, and Bev gathers drinks for everyone. Somehow, surprisingly, this has become a sort of routine they’d found in their twenties, when hanging out just for the sake of hanging out got suddenly a whole lot harder but no less important. 

“So I had lunch with Eddie,” Stan repeats without looking up from where he was scooping a large helping of curry over rice. 

Richie’s heart tumbles again. He’d very nearly been able to forget that they were talking about Eddie before.

“He said Richie was boring.”

Damn. No pulled punches. That hurts worse than he’d expected. 

Bev chokes loudly on her drink. “He said _what_?”

“That’s what I said!” Stan hurtles forward through the rest of his encounter. “Richie is the least boring person I know, but Eddie said he just asked about his work and talked about a rivalry between two famers markets.”

He pulls the front of his sweatshirt up and over his face, unable to meet the gawking looks his friends gave him over his table. He already knows he’d made a fool of himself, they don’t have to look at him like they’re waiting for some logical explanation.

Once his face stops burning, he exits the protective shell of his clothing and rests his chin on his fist like a pouting child.

“I was nervous! He looked like someone who would want to date, like, the physical embodiment of responsibility.” He slouches deep in his uncomfortable chair. “So I tried to act all mature.”

Beverly, the evil mean terrible woman, snorts. She tries to hide it, but Richie hates her and will never forgive her for it. 

“It’s Stan’s fault!” Richie points accusingly. “He told me to _be normal_!”

“Uh.” Stan hides his own amusement only very slightly better than Bev did. “Why would I set him up with you if he wanted to date someone mature?”

That’s actually a good fuckin point well made but Richie would sooner die than admit it out loud and give Stan that personal victory. He resumes shoving as much of his dinner into his face as he can at once so that he physically could not let his thoughts escape by accident.

“Anyway.” Stan’s eyes dart around at the various containers of food, eyeing the bok choy hungrily. “I think I can get you a second date, if you want.”

It feels like the world lurches around Richie, like he’s cartoonishly close to a spit take or dropping his food all over his lap. In reality, he, and the world, are all perfectly still. A little deer in headlights looking, but very still.

“Wait, he said Richie’s boring, but he wants a second date?” Bev unknowingly asks the exact thoughts cycling around and around in Richie’s head.

“I showed him a clip of your standup online and assured him you’re not boring,” Stan says. “I think he only half believed me, but I can probably convince him.”

“What clip?” Richie asks. He doesn’t bother hiding the desperation in his voice, the answer could make or break his near 20 year friendship with Stan. 

“Pittsburgh last year,” Stan says. 

“_Stanley_,” Richie slouches heavily back in his seat with a sigh. He’d killed in Pittsburgh, a bunch of half stoned college students among the best crowds he’s ever had. “This is why I love you. Did he laugh? Did he say anything?”

“Holy shit.” Bev’s smile is crooked and surprised and pleased. “How hot is this guy?”

“_So hot_,” Richie replies immediately. “Hang on-“ he looks down to unlock his phone, only catching Stan meeting Bev’s eyes with a minute head shake in his peripherals. He pulls up the website of the firm that both Stan and Eddie work at, opens Eddie’s picture, and hands the phone to Bev. 

“Did you just have that open?” Stan asks softly, mortified. 

“He’s…” Bev squints and pulls the phone out of Richie’s hand for a better look. “He’s cute, I guess?” 

Stan gets that look on his face that means he’s about to say something really bitchy, Richie can see it in the twitch of his eyebrows, by this point. “He looks like a randomized character in a video game about working at the DMV.”

“Fuck off, Stan!” Richie yells over Bev’s cackling laughter. “But do get me the second date.”

After they eat, they all drag Richie’s comforter off of his bed and to his couch, where they curl up together to watch whatever terrible horror movie they can find readily available. Richie drops his head onto Bev’s shoulder, and Stan ends up with an arm over his waist using his torso as a pillow. It’s comfortable and nice and Richie isn’t a fucking cheeseball so he won’t say it, but he loves these people. 

xxxx

Richie sets aside extra time before his (unexpected, miraculous, can’t believe it’s happening) second date with Eddie to really panic and stare into his closet in despair. And, as if she can read his mind, Bev welcomes herself into his apartment without knocking once again.

“Wear your blue shirt, it’s your best.” She wanders into his bedroom and sits herself on the edge of his unmade bed like she belongs there. Normally, he would have something to say about her getting comfortable, but he doesn’t have it in him just then. If he opens his mouth he might puke.

Plus, he turns and finds that she has a bottle of whiskey on her lap and he knows a thing or two about gift horses and where not to look at them. 

“Are you going to She’s All That me?” Richie asks. “Because I promise taking my glasses off isn’t going to make me hot, it’s just going to make me not be able to see.”

They each take a shot for good luck before she sends Richie off in his blue shirt to meet Eddie.

xxxx

Their second date is at an arcade.

A lot of talking had determined that Richie’s date ruining nerves had come from the slightly too formal setting of a nice restaurant in the city. Reportedly, Eddie had reluctantly agreed that the setting was too stuffy and he didn’t blame Richie for getting nervous.

So they find a spot, some blatant 80s nostalgia trap for people in their twenties and thirties desperate to escape from the mundanity of their daily lives with a little taste of relived childhood. Eddie isn’t dressed like he just got out of work like last time, stiff buttoned shirt replaced with a soft polo and a red hoodie that compliments his tanned skin, even in the cooling October New York weather. 

They both haltingly apologize for their first date, words tumbling over each others’ and then vanishing into awkward laughs. No one blames anyone, sometimes it just happens.

Eddie asks about Richie’s comedy work, what drove him to it, what it’s like getting on stage, if he enjoys traveling around to different cities. It is a complete change from his demeanor on their first horrible date, and Richie couldn’t be happier about it. 

“I liked your bit about the bird feeders,” Eddie confesses. 

That bit hadn’t been in his Pittsburgh set, Richie thinks, tries to swallow through his suddenly dry throat. Eddie had been looking him up. 

“That’s about Stan,” Richie tells him.

Eddie’s face lights up. 

“He spent all this time reading about birds and food and hung all these nice feeders he bought and day one-“ Richie swings his hands in a pantomime of something being swarmed. “Pigeons.”

Eddie’s laugh lights up in his dark eyes and reveals dimpling lines in his cheeks. “I’m so going to give him shit about that.”

“_Please_ do,” Richie says. “He hates being included in any of my jokes.”

They play skee ball and talk about their favorite movies back and forth. Eddie claims to like movies that make him think, and he rolls his eyes when Richie says that Casper is the best movie ever made because Bill Pullman was hot in it. Eddie later admits that he thinks that Back to the Future is good, despite it decidedly not being a movie that has ever made anyone think. 

Eddie obliterates Richie’s skee ball score. Primarily because Richie keeps trying to make complicated trick shots that work out rarely to never, spinning and turning and launching the ball under one of his legs. In one instance his ball bounces into the next lane over and ruins a guy’s decent streak, which makes Eddie laugh so hard he snorts. The guy could literally come over and punch Richie in the face and he wouldn’t care. 

They quickly collect their tickets and hustle away from the angry skee ball man. 

“Oh shit!” Richie jostles Eddie with his elbow. (Eddie rubs at his ribs like he’s in actual serious pain.) “They have street fighter here!”

He walks away, leaving Eddie no option but to follow.

“I wasted so many hours on this as a kid.” Richie smiles, genuine and happy as he touches the front panel of the game. “You?”

“Nah.” Eddie’s mouth twitches into something that isn’t quite a smile. “My mom never let me go to the arcade. She said only hooligans went there.”

Richie barks out a loud laugh. “If your mom was worried about hooligans, she would’ve hated me.”

“Oh, she definitely would have hated you.” Eddie does not look like he thinks this is a bad thing. 

Richie grabs his game tokens and pushes them into the machine. “Come on,” he goads. “Fight the eighth grade champ of 1989. I won’t take it easy on you.”

Eddie beats him three times in a row. 

“You button mashing mother fucker!” Richie screams probably too loud and bangs his fist against the game cabinet. It’s on reflex, and his brain catches up on a delay, kindly reminding him that calling a guy a mother fucker on a date is on the list of Probably Not Cool Things To Do. 

The apology half formed in his mouth fizzles out, though, when he sees the pleased look on Eddie’s face. 

“One more round?” He asks, holding out another token, thirteen again. Knobby kneed and eager and cautiously hopeful.

“Masochist.” Eddie laughs and takes the token from him. This time when Richie loses, it’s because he’s distracted by the line of Eddie pressed up against his side, hips bumping together every so often. 

When they step away finally, Eddie drags them both out of the way to go digging in his hoodie pocket. Richie mumbles a shocked ‘oh my god’ when he produces a mini bottle of hand sanitizer. 

“Do you know how many germs are on those buttons?” Eddie asks without any sense of irony. “Kids play those all day and I don’t want pink eye.”

He gestures for Richie to hold his hands out, and he does, however reluctantly. It’s annoyingly impossible to use hand sanitizer without looking like a total dweeb. (This fits well with Eddie’s whole look, but not with _his_.) One of Eddie's hands reaches up, cupping underneath Richie’s own to steady him before applying the sanitizer. His thumb brushes gently over the skin between Richie’s forefinger and thumb, palm soft against his knuckles. It sends goosebumps all the way up Richie’s arm, and he’s suddenly very thankful for the long sleeves he has on. 

They split their tickets and approach the prize counter separately. Moments later, Eddie presents Richie with a novelty wooden comb, and Richie gives Eddie an eye hurting neon green friendship bracelet and an eraser shaped like a hot dog. 

Eddie lets him secure the bracelet around his wrist, looking only a little put upon in a highly performative way. 

They get ice cream despite the chill in the air and Eddie smiles even as he shivers wildly. 

“So, can we just pretend that other date never happened?” Richie asks while they’re stopped at a crosswalk. 

Eddie snorts into his plain vanilla cone. “Yeah, sure. This one has been much better.”

“Yeah.” Richie’s agreement is a sigh of relief. “You seem more relaxed, too.”

It was immediately noticeable, only getting more and more obvious as the night went on. Eddie at dinner had been soft spoken and stilted, both of them struggling to find common ground to meet on. Richie refuses to believe he is _entirely_ to blame for that failure. This time around Eddie’s talkative, he laughs freely and snorts and swears creatively when Richie gets a hit against him in their fighting game. 

“I’m sorry about that.” Eddie glances over out of the corner of his eyes. “I’m, uh, I'm just recently — out.” 

“Oh.” A lot of things suddenly make a lot of sense. “Cool,” Richie says in the lamest attempt at friendly support ever undertaken. 

“And I haven’t dated in a long time,” he confesses even further. 

“Hey,” Richie stops him short. “I mean, you don’t owe me an explanation or anything. I could barely string three words together all night. I was _boring_.”

Eddie visibly cringes. “Stanley told you about that?”

“Yep.” Richie only obnoxiously pops his P a _little_ bit. “Stan the man has no protective instincts when it comes to me. He thought it was funny.”

“I’m sorry,” Eddie speaks in a rush. He looks guilty already. 

“You were right!” Richie interrupts before Eddie can work himself into an anxious spiral. “I was super boring! It’s like, oh no, a cute guy, and my entire brain melted down.”

Eddie’s cheeks color. “Well, you’re doing much better this time.”

“Good.” Richie smiles, wide and pleased and stupid. 

They find a natural lull in conversation where they both finish their ice creams and toss their napkins into the nearest trash. Eddie shivers even more and shoves his fists deep into his pockets. Subconsciously, they find themselves heading toward a subway entrance. 

“I was engaged,” Eddie finally speaks, voice much more subdued than before. 

“What, like, to a woman?” A million more polite ways he could ask, but the faulty brain to mouth filter let that shit out instead. 

“Yeah.” Eddie’s breath puffs out in a half formed laugh. “To a woman.”

“Yeesh.” 

Eddie surprises him again by laughing. Not a sad huff or a half assed thing, his real laugh. “Yeah. I broke it off like two months ago.”

“Two-!” Richie’s legs stop working just feet from the top of the subway stairs. “Two months!?”

“Yeah, but-“ Eddie steps closer again. “This isn’t, like, some rebound thing, okay? I just- I finally know what I want.”

Richie had had his own issues after high school with not only coming to terms with his sexuality, but even being able to recognize it in the first place. He’d thought it should have been obvious, the easiest thing in the world to know what it is you want, but several failed relationships with women had proved that concept wrong. 

So he gets it, totally, that settled feeling of _finally_ knowing and understanding and getting to have what you never realized you wanted. 

He also knows Stan wouldn’t set him up with a guy who was just looking for some gay experience. Annoying idiot or not, they’re brothers, Stan wouldn’t let him be used like that. 

“Okay, yeah.” Richie tries to reassure him the best he could. “That makes sense. That’s just- It’s so new.”

“Trust me,” Eddie insists. “It’s for the best.”

Eddie looks relieved. His big brown eyes dart from where they’d been staring at the ground back up to Richie’s eyes, to his lips, to the signpost above the station. “I’m on the M.” He points weakly at the sign. 

“I’m F,” Richie replies. His station is still a few blocks away in this part of town. 

“Okay,” Eddie says quietly. He clears his throat and says it again, louder. “Goodnight. I- thank you.”

He takes one stuttering step away, like he’s unsure, then a second. 

“Goodnight,” Richie replies. 

Eddie smiles at him with those dimples one last time and turns away at last. Richie watches as he goes. His right hand raises, moving to tug on that horrible green bracelet on his left wrist, as he disappears down into the station. 

xxxx

On Monday, Richie wakes up to a text message after an entire weekend spent mourning the fact that he forgot to ask for Eddie’s phone number like an idiot. 

‘Hi, it’s Eddie. I asked Stanley for your number, I hope that’s okay.’

Richie may do a little bit of a horizontal victory dance (not a euphemism). He may also drop his phone onto his face and spend a paranoid twenty minutes making sure he didn’t knock his tooth loose before finally replying. 

‘thats ok!!’

Then, all conventions regarding double texting be damned:

‘how is your monday?’

Immediately following again with:

‘do you have halloween plans?’

He’s up, showered, dressed, and fed before he gets another message back from Eddie. Richie would bet money that he’s the type to never look at his phone at work at the risk of looking like he’s slacking. 

‘Slow already. No plans, you? Do you want to get dinner Friday? Nothing fancy.’

Richie feels like a teenage girl in a movie written by someone with little to no understanding of how teenage girls operate. Like he wants to scream because a cute boy asked him to prom. 

‘cant:( I have a gig in Ohio Saturday, but when I get back?’

He was pretty sure his soul escapes his body when Eddie texts him back ‘It’s a date :)’

xxxx

They text almost all the time after that. Well, all the time that fits around Eddie’s work hours. He even calls Richie during his lunch hour late in the week to wish him luck and safe travels to Ohio of all god awful places to go. Those are his exact words and Richie replays them in his mind like they’re poetry. 

At the weekly dinner gathering in Richie’s apartment, Stan calls Richie disgusting when he smiles at his phone over tacos. (Eddie had texted him a picture of a fat pikachu.)

“I think it’s cute,” Bev smiles obnoxiously over at him. “Richie’s in looove.”

Richie throws a handful of lettuce at her. 

xxxx

Richie calls Eddie on facetime after he wraps up in Ohio, back in his hotel room and freshly showered. It doesn’t take very long for him to answer, clearly dressed for bed and looking comfortable and sleepy. His hair is damp and falls over his forehead in an annoyingly good-looking way, making Richie feel like a drowned rat in comparison. 

“How was it?” Eddie asks right away. He bounces a little when he folds himself onto a dark couch, pulling a blanket over his knees. 

“Good.” Richie shrugs one shoulder. “Small venue, small crowd.”

“What's even in ohio, anyway?” Eddie’s nose wrinkles in distaste when he asks. 

“Oh my god, _nothing_.” Richie collapses back against his pillow. “Literally corn fields. Some guy had the audacity to get mad at me for pointing it out.”

Eddie’s smile is warm and his eyes are soft when he laughs at Richie’s indignation. He blinks and looks off across his apartment for a moment, at what Richie can’t tell, but his heart stutters watching Eddie’s eyelashes catch the light. Of all the fuckin body parts to get caught up on, his eyelashes.

“If that pissed him off, Ohio needs more than just a mediocre comedian to get them to relax.” Richie jokes weakly, trying desperately to distract himself before he says something weird. He’s pretty sure telling someone their eyelashes are pretty is like, shit serial killers do. 

It is really nice to see Eddie’s face again thought, even if it’s not in person. He won’t say it, it would be too much too soon, but he misses him. It’s bizarre, how little they’ve seen of each other in person compared to how often they talk to each other, how much a couple weeks of contact has been enough to get Richie irreversibly attached. Addicted. 

“Come on, don’t sell yourself short,” Eddie says.

“Aww, Eddie Spaghetti, that’s so sweet!”

The soft curve to Eddie’s lips falls away into a deep scowl. 

“I changed my mind,” he says right away. “You aren’t funny at all.”

Richie laughs hard enough he’s sure he must be annoying anyone in the room next door. “You don’t like it, Eddie Spaghetti?”

“I’m going to hang up on you,” Eddie announces. “I’ll do it.”

“You probably should-“ Richie breaks off with a wide yawn he forgets to point his camera away from. “You need all eight hours or you’ll be cranky.”

Eddie rolls his eyes heavily. 

“Dinner tomorrow?” He asks. 

“Yeah,” Eddie confirms. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, spaghetti.”

Eddie’s loud and annoyed UGH is cut off by the call ending. 

xxxx

Eddie is late to dinner, leaving Richie to get nervously tipsy alone at a booth seat. Not nervous like first date nervous, more just awkwardly sitting alone with nothing better to do with his mouth than to drink. 

“I’m so sorry!” Eddie scrambles over to Richie’s table, harried and breathless. “I couldn’t get service on the train to call you, we got delayed three fucking times, I’m-“

His eyes rove over Richie, taking in his dark sweater, his recently trimmed (though still impossible to tame) hair, and the sort of ditzy smile on his face. 

“Hi.” Eddie stops his rapidfire speech, gradually catching his breath. “How are you?”

“I’m good.” Richie’s grin grows wider. He can’t seem to ever stop smiling when Eddie is around. Part of him hopes Eddie is the type to get heated about how the correct phrase is ‘I’m well’, just to each him twitch over it. 

Eddie sits down opposite Richie, accepting the glass of water Richie slides toward him without prompting. 

“I fucking hate New York sometimes.” Eddie wipes water from his lips with the back of his hand. “Some idiot keeps pulling the emergency brakes and delaying my line, I have to leave even earlier for work than I already did and they somehow haven’t caught him.”

It's not the first time Richie has seen Eddie get agitated and have his words come spilling out like an angry rapidfire flood. There had been a time during one of Eddie’s lunch break phone calls where he’d ranted about Fucking Ron in his office and his habit of shutting his door to “make some calls” and instead watch reruns of MASH at a volume loud enough that everyone could hear him. It’s oddly cute. It’s very _Eddie_. Short and wiry and full of righteous indignation that frequently comes bursting out in the form of loud swearing. 

“I’ve heard about that, it’s fucked up.” Richie goads him on, trying to get more out of him. 

“It _is_ fucked up!” Eddie hisses. 

They’re interrupted by a waiter just looking to do his job before Eddie can get properly fired up. Looking very much like he does not want to approach these two men having a shouting conversation in the late afternoon. 

“Anyway I hope they catch him and he goes to jail forever.” Eddie twists a napkin between his hands roughly. 

“Maybe if you call the cops and tell them he’s inconveniencing you personally they can classify it as a hate crime,” Richie suggests through a mouthful of warm bread. 

Eddie’s laugh rushes out of him in a wheeze. 

“Maybe I’ll become a vigilante,” Eddie replies. “Like a superhero.” 

Richie has to force himself to not think about Eddie in tights. “Dude, what if it’s Stan doing it to sabotage your career and steal your job?”

“Oh!” Eddie has to pause to laugh into his fist. “Stan is the ebrake bandit!”

“Have no fear!” Richie declares. “The M Train Man is here!”

“What does that make you?” Eddie asks, carrying on the ridiculous scenario eagerly. 

He feigns like he’s thinking something up, like he didn’t already have an answer in mind knowing that Eddie would ask. “I’m the hot piece of ass that you have to constantly rescue.”

They bounce back and forth like that, suggesting more and more elaborate and implausible solutions to the city’s problem until Eddie is properly laughing, his shoulders relaxed and the annoyed line in his forehead gone. One of Eddie’s feet tangle between Richie’s to hook their ankles together right in the middle of him saying something about the ninja turtles and it draws him up short, words stuttering to a halt. 

“Glad to be back?” Eddie asks. 

“Yeah,” Richie answers. Then, because he is an idiot with an allergy to being genuine, adds, “I missed the stink of shit and being woken up by traffic every morning.”

The look Eddie gives him is entirely too knowing to be acceptable. 

They eat and chat and goof off and the top of Eddie’s foot bops into Richie’s calf arhythmically the entire time. 

Afterward, they take their time walking together toward a subway entrance. It’s cold again, but neither of them are willing to separate and go home quite yet. 

“I’ve never had someone facetime me just to say goodnight,” Eddie says suddenly. He’s biting at his bottom lip when Richie glances over at him, like he wants to swallow the words back up already. “It was nice.”

“Aw, Eds.” Richie swings out to gently bump the backs of their wrists together. His fingers ache to wrap around and tangle with Eddie’s. “I wanted to see you.”

“I wanted to see you, too.” Eddie’s cheeks color so prettily. Amazing how someone as loud as Eddie, as brash and as funny as him will still turn shy at the slightest provocation. 

And how, despite that shy side, despite how he claims that being new at this has him feeling like he’s lost training wheels on a steep hill, he can be so brave. A hell of a lot braver than Richie when he actually reaches out and his fingers tickle along Richie’s palm before tangling between them. Something Richie had been way too cowardly to do on his own. Eddie’s tiny, tentative grin spreads into something much brighter when Richie squeezes his hand in return. His fingers are slim, but strong, holding tight and warm. 

“I-“ Eddie stumbles over his words, his fingers flex around Richie’s hand anxiously. “I've regretted not kissing you every day since the arcade.”

Richie stops short, Eddie’s fingers suddenly five hyper focused points of heat against his own. He turns on his heels, mouth gaping uselessly for once. He can’t just _say_ that, can he?? Can he just say that and give Richie an entire heart attack right there in the street? 

“I was-“ Eddie’s Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows roughly. “I thought it was too- too soo-“

He refuses to feel bad for interrupting Eddie mid-speech by kissing him. Not when his speech wasn’t very good in the first place and kissing him is all he’d been able to think about since he came barreling into the restaurant like an angry short demon. Eddie doesn’t seem to mind either, if the way he instantly wraps his arms around Richie’s shoulders is anything to go by. He has to roll onto his toes to even them out, but the shift in angle has their lips sliding together perfectly.

Richie is already embarrassingly shaky just from the simple kiss, so when Eddie nips his teeth against his bottom lip, he thinks for a second that his legs might actually collapse right out from under him. 

They separate, just barely, still holding onto each other. 

“Oh.” Richie says, an endless and always following well of intelligence. 

Eddie looks up at him with those wide, dark eyes, flitting all over Richie’s face, never still. His eyes flick downward, and Richie’s brain weeps over those pretty eyelashes again because he is a person with major problems. A funny little smile twitches against his lips, immediately pushed back down. 

“Can I keep you?” Eddie whispers. 

It takes Richie a minute to process the words, his bird brain still stuck on _eyelashes_ and _kiss_. A minute to dredge up why the words themselves sound so familiar. 

“Eddie!” The volume of Richie’s voice was entirely inappropriate for their fairly public setting. His hands, previously very contentedly resting along Eddie’s spine, move to cup either side of his face. “Did you watch Casper just because I mentioned it?”

“Yeah.” He finally gives into the smile tugging at his face. “You were right about Bill Pullman.”

Richie doesn’t know what to do, his brain has basically stopped all function. There are no words he could ever string together to properly describe how he feels. So he just... doesn’t. He uses that grip on Eddie’s face to reel him in and Eddie meets him beat for beat, fingers wrenching into Richie’s hair. 

This time, when Eddie’s tongue teases against the seam of Richie’s lips he doesn’t freeze or stutter or collapse on the ground like a cartoonishly melted puddle of human. He opens up to him, pulls him closer, hums his enthusiastic approval into his mouth. 

“Out of the fucking way!” Some asshole with no respect shouts as he pushes past them and jostles them so their noses mash together painfully. Like, sure, they’re in the middle of the sidewalk and Richie had kind of forgotten there were other people around still, but did he not realize that interrupting a budding couple’s first incredible kiss was unbelievably rude? 

Richie turns to engage in the time honored New York City tradition of screaming loudly at strangers in public and, part of him liked to think, protecting his Eddie like a fair maiden. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, and yet somehow it does, that Eddie gets there first. 

“GO JUMP INTO FUCKING TRAFFIC, COCKBREATH,” he screams at a volume and level of intensity that is genuinely impressive, 10/10 scores from all the judges, very hot indeed. If regular Eddie is hot and frazzled annoyed Eddie is hot, neither one can even hold a candle to pissed off screaming Eddie. Like, holy shit, where did _that_ come from? 

The guy flips them off over his shoulder but keeps walking in a rush, too busy to actually bother. 

“Oh no.” Richie pushes his recently smashed nose into Eddie’s hair. (He smells amazing). “_I’m_ the fair maiden.”

Eddie’s fingers curl into Richie’s hair where his hand had refused to fall away during his intense screaming, his other arm sneaks around his waist, holding him. He drops his forehead against Richie’s collarbone.

“You’re an idiot.” His voice is fond and his words give Richie the warmest butterflies he’s felt since he was an awkward teenager.

**Author's Note:**

> i am behaemoth @ tumblr


End file.
